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"Oryx and Crake is speculative fiction at its finest. Part dystopian satire, part post-apocalyptic nightmare, the novel examines the flaws of contemporary society through the lens of an imagined future that could all too easily come to pass. But examines isn't the right word for what Atwood accomplishes here; eviscerates is more fitting. As in The Handmaid's Tale (1985), her classic takedown of totalitarian theocratic misogyny, the author's satiric wit is razor-sharp and unsparing. Oryx and Crake isn't a book for the faint of heart or the easily offended. Potential outrages include a narcissistic, self-pitying protagonist who treats women poorly, unflinching depictions of child pornography and sex slavery, all manner of unfettered consumerist debauchery, and (spoiler alert) the deliberate annihilation of the human race by a brilliant scientist. Oh, and corporations control the world, social and economic inequality are endemic, catastrophic climate change is a given, and science and technology, especially genetic engineering, are exploited purely for profit by said all-powerful corporations without regard for human consequences. If some of these details sound uncomfortably like the present, well, that's the point. Oryx and Crake isn't about the future; it's about the present. The book is about us. Whatever future ultimately comes to pass-dystopian, post-apocalyptic, or otherwise-we are responsible for it. This story is our story. "

"A new musical explores life in high school in a way that's eerily familiar. It's called Ranked, and it's set in a dystopian world where your class rank - determined by grades and test scores - governs everything from where you sit to what your future holds." This musical, written by a high school teacher, explores some really interesting questions inspired by the students including: "How do we know the difference between who we actually are and what people want from us?" Usually, Granite Bay announces its spring musical by posting headshots of the performers in the hallway. But this year, it tried something a little different: Holmes asked students to anonymously submit personal text messages, exchanges and emails that depicted the pressure the students were under from parents and counselors. One text exchange reads: A: How was the test? B: I got an 86%! A: Oh no what happened? Another: A: I'm watching you B: Where am I currently then A: Failing class They used the messages in a collage that included headlines from recent news stories ("The Silicon Valley Suicides," "Is class rank valid?") and hung it in the hallway instead of the headshots. A banner at the top reads: "Pain is temporary. Grades last forever."

"Last month, a headline at Paste Magazine asked: "Did Neil Postman Predict the Rise of Trump and Fake News?" Sign up to the new-look Media Briefing: bigger, better, brighter Read more Colleagues and former students of my father, who taught at New York University for more than 40 years and who died in 2003, would now and then email or Facebook message me, after the latest Trumpian theatrics, wondering, "What would Neil think?" or noting glumly, "Your dad nailed it." The central argument of Amusing Ourselves is simple: there were two landmark dystopian novels written by brilliant British cultural critics - Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell - and we Americans had mistakenly feared and obsessed over the vision portrayed in the latter book (an information-censoring, movement-restricting, individuality-emaciating state) rather than the former (a technology-sedating, consumption-engorging, instant-gratifying bubble)."

"ABOUT halfway through Dave Eggers's bestselling dystopian satire on Silicon Valley, "The Circle", the reader meets Stewart, a bald, silent, stooped 60-year-old who has "been filming, recording, every moment of his life now for five years". Stewart is the first of the novel's characters to make all his actions visible to anyone with a computer who cares to look-the first "transparent man". Cathal Gurrin, a computer scientist at Dublin City University, is not quite that transparent. But to those with access to his archive he is pretty see-through. Mr Gurrin is a "life logger", someone who thinks that if, as Socrates claimed, the unexamined life is not worth living, the life which is digitally recorded with an eye to potentially endless re-examination will have much to recommend it. Patterns in their data, they hope, will reveal opportunities to be healthier, happier and more effective. To this end Mr Gurrin wears a wide-angle camera around his neck which snaps several pictures of his field of view every minute, recording its location and orientation each time it does so. He has been using such devices for more than seven years. "

"en years ago, Margaret Atwood ended the world, and in rather spectacular fashion. Oryx and Crake was a revelation: a harrowing vision of society gone terribly wrong, and a reminder that Atwood, author of the classic dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale, is one of the best speculative-fiction writers alive. The first volume in a trilogy, it was followed by The Year of the Flood, which, in a bit of remarkable narrative showing-off, offered a completely different story that unfolded concurrently with Oryx and Crake. With the publication of MaddAddam next week, she concludes her epic account of what happens in the wake of the end, after her "waterless flood" has scrubbed the planet clean, leaving behind only a handful of people - or, at least, only a handful we know of - to survive in a landscape populated by fearsome pigoons (angry pigs genetically altered to grow human organs). The trilogy is one of the most impressive achievements in contemporary literature, and stands as a grand document of humanity's greatest failings but also a moving celebration of our greatest possibilities. They are frank and ugly books but also funny and beautiful. And for all their SF fireworks, all the world-building pyrotechnics, they are quietly realistic stories that recognize that any future the world can hope to have will be one of adaptation and synthesis, of our learning to live better with those around us to make the most of the diminished circumstances in which we're likely to find ourselves."

"From reality TV show Big Brother to warnings about surveillance, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has had a lasting impact on modern society. With the very idea of truth under attack, the Guardian's Dorian Lynskey explains why, 70 years after publication, the dystopian classic might matter more than ever."

"Is it the end of times or does it just feel like it?"

"WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Dystopia is here. It's not just the "imagined place" of the dictionary definition or a future state of dystopian novels. It is very real and right now, at least for those of us trying to follow national politics. And it's not just Donald Trump. It's Barack Obama, it's Ted Cruz, it's the New York Times, it's Breitbart News. It is an alternate universe detached from the world we live in but intruding into it in painful and dangerous ways. It is a media narrative of political conspirators colluding with a dictatorial archenemy, of an intemperate and delusional leader overturning the institutions of democracy, of a "deep-state" resistance to constitutional authority. It is a dystopia of rampant hypocrisy, where obstructing legislation, supporting a law-enforcement official who strays beyond the limits of his authority, or boycotting a president's appointments is evil and undemocratic until it's your party that wants to do it."

"We're not readers, but active participants-with the ability to rewrite the ending."

"Big government and big media are dominating American society and suffocating free speech. Who will rise up?"

"Young adult fiction is awash in projections of a dystopian future, yet we're still sliding into that future, and young adults are going along with it."

"Excerpted from the book Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. The rest of the book is about another tale - one that's not fictional and not yet written: the tale of our own future with AI. How would you like it to play out? Could something remotely like the Omega story actually occur and, if so, would you want it to? Leaving aside speculations about superhuman AI, how would you like our tale to begin? How do you want AI to impact jobs, laws and weapons in the coming decade? Looking further ahead, how would you write the ending? This tale is one of truly cosmic proportions, for it involves nothing short of the ultimate future of life in our universe. And it's a tale for us to write."

"In a paper published this week in Aging, Horvath and his colleague Ake T. Lu formally announced a project they've been teasing for a couple months now: a "time to death" clock called DNAm GrimAge that they claim can predict, better than any other tool, when a given person might die. It was announced in tandem with AgeAccelGrim, which provides a countdown to the year you'll develop cancer or coronary heart disease. The research has already captured the attention of the life insurance industry. After all, a solid death date could mean real savings when it comes to pricing policies."